sub rosa
by Celeste Goodchild
Summary: Under the rose, there lie two faces. Do they recognise each other after all, or is it just another ride in the elevator?


This is only my second "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" fanfic, and is perhaps not as original nor as unusual as the first, but I felt that I had to write something about the fuzzy future everyone likes to determine for the characters of the story.

No infringement on the rights of the owners is intended; indeed, I just write this for my own amusement and for no profit motive whatsoever. I just want to share some of my thoughts with other fans of the series in the format of a fic rather than in essay form like I have done before.

Comments are appreciated; I can't improve if I can't see the problem. My email is luna_dreamscape at hotmail.com, or simply leave a comment here.

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~ still too young to travel so far ~ old enough to know who you are ~ wise enough to carry the scars without any blame ~ there's no-one to blame…? ~ (Distant Sun, Neil Finn)

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sub rosa

Sparing a glance at her watch, she allowed herself to mutter one little curse. As a general rule, she didn't allow such a thing often; it wasn't that she particularly disliked the sounds of the words, more that it just didn't…_feel_ right, somehow. She couldn't explain it. Certainly she had never tried to explain it to anyone, not even herself, preferring instead to just accept it as a part of what she was.

Not that she ever felt entirely sure that she knew what that was, but life went on. 

Life seemed to be moving at an even quicker pace today though, but she blamed that on the fact that she was running late. The weight of the ticking hand was heavy at the front of her mind as she pushed through the revolving door and through to the actual foyer of the building. Her appointment was to be held upstairs, and though she had always preferred the stairs to the elevator – and the minor work-out was not the only reason behind her preference – she knew she didn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

Briefly she conversed with the receptionist who directed her to go right upstairs; adjusting her short hair subconsciously she crossed the floor to make her way to the bank of elevators at one end of the immense, plant-filled foyer.

She had to admit that she appreciated the greenery; she'd started looking after plants as a serious hobby not long after she had entered senior high school. Nothing about the hobby was easy, for she could see she hadn't the slightest thread of innate talent for it, but she had – and still did – gain an amazing amount of nostalgic happiness out of it.

Not that she knew where the nostalgia came from. Not even her long-dead parents had ever had green thumbs. 

She pressed the button of the lift and turned from it to look about the room. It was a curious habit she'd never been able to break herself of, possibly because it was something that had been with her as far back as early childhood. Just looking around her world, seeing what it had to offer her…what she had to offer the world…

She supposed that as something of a psychologist she should have some idea as to why she had an infinite curiosity about the people all around her, but then, life was odd that way at times. Pondering the mystery of this, she turned her gaze to the desk where she herself had stood only moments before, speaking with one of the secretaries in order to garner some directions. Though such a thing was not uncommon in a building as large, tall and diverse as this one, something about the man struck her as odd. At first she figured it was just that he was talking to exactly the same woman she had spoken with, but it was only in retrospect that she was struck heavily with the memory that there was something similar about them, and it was not only the usual pale pink-blonde shades of their hair.

He was long and nervous – she saw no other way to describe him. After speaking with the woman as she herself had done, albeit with a more jolting manner than she had used, he looked again at his watch. The gesture was truly the motion of one held somehow at the mercy of time; his gaze moved from the face to the elevators, then longingly to the staircase, finally back to that poker-faced time dial.

The brief ping of the elevator doors alerted her to the fact that the elevator had reached her at last. The yawning mouth expelled several people who moved past her as fish in a stream, and she boarded the elevator alone.

It was hard to shake that awful feeling of Judgement she always got when she entered the elevator, that feeling she sometimes got when she boarded the roped rectangle that was capable of conveying her up or down, to the heavens or to the subterranean. She'd always laughed faintly at herself for entertaining such fanciful thoughts, especially as they were so utterly unfounded, but still…still…

When she was alone, as she was now, the laughter always echoed too hollowly to drive those little fears of uncontrolled transcendence or damnation away.

She was leaning lightly against the back wall, closing her eyes when it happened. There was a brief clatter of feet, a panting breath that seemed too heavy to be merely from physical exertion, and the man she had seen talking to the desk in a manner so agitated was now her only companion in the elevator. As the doors closed smoothly behind him, he leaned against the wall to her left, taking a breath as he did so. Now her eyes were open, and she found herself watching him in genuine curiosity. As he expelled the air, his eyes moved up to meet hers. They faintly narrowed in apparent surprise or annoyance at her gaze upon him, though she did not avert her eyes. Rather, she smiled at him.

"Running late?"

He was so long in replying that she began to regret having said a word, even though it was her way to speak to those around her. It wasn't so much an uncontrollable desire to be friends with everyone and anyone, it was more…an empathy, she supposed. She enjoyed being with people. 

The long, nervous man adjusted the thick folder he carried under one arm and sighed so suddenly that she literally jumped. "Yes."

The one word answer spoke volumes whereas the man himself would not; she turned her face from him with a faint feeling of disappointment. This feeling made her slightly uncomfortable, for usually she did not care much when someone apparently wished to snub her friendly words. 

This man was an oddity, and not just in his appearance and his behaviour – something about the effect he had on her was much more peculiar than anything else about him. 

There was not much time to dwell long on this fact, for it was around about that moment that the elevator gave an all-mighty jerk that would have sent both man and woman to their respective knees had neither of them been leaning against the walls of the elevator; she gained her support from the back wall, he from the left. 

Silence temporarily made the air in the elevator feel unbreathable, thick; it wasn't until the nervous man moved forward with his glassed eyes looking to the lights that the woman found that her lungs still worked…even if the elevator itself apparently didn't.

"The power is still on," the man said aloud, idly removing the folder he carried from beneath his arm. Not once removing his eyes from the lights, he stooped slightly to put the folder down on the floor and frowned deeply. "The cables must be jammed."

"…does this mean we're going to be stuck in here for awhile, then?" she asked, deciding not to think it odd that he would become so talkative the second the elevator stopped its ascent. 

The man looked away from the lights – and the trapdoor above – turning his gaze to the telephone box in the small mobile room they shared. "I'm really not sure, because it depends on what the problem actually is. I'm assuming it's the cables because the power seems to have been uninterrupted and is at full rather than emergency power. I'll try the phone and see what they have to say about the matter."

Rather impressed with how cool he was being given the situation, she couldn't help but look deeper than his apparent calmness. Having become very adept with people's words and gestures over the years – sometimes she wondered why she felt what she did, a forceful desire to understand people for what people really were rather than what they pretended to be – she noticed the way the fingers of his left hand lightly twitched, the quiet strain underlying his almost monotonous tone.

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I don't think he likes elevators, somehow.

She didn't blame him one whit – she had never liked them much herself. 

The conversation the man had on the telephone was brief, starting out as one ended on his side before the tables were turned, leaving him with the one word answers and accompanying nods that the person on the other end of the phone surely could not see. When he hung up, his narrow face was pinched but not any paler than it had been before.

"He tells me that no other elevator in the building is not operating, and that he can not even begin to give me a reason as to why this one should have stopped." Was it her imagination, or were his eyes darkening? "He says that he will put a crew on it right away, though given the unusual circumstances the elevator might start again on its own in a moment anyway."

"You don't seem convinced."

He merely shrugged. "I have the sinking gut impression that we may be in here for awhile, I'm afraid."

He had returned to leaning against the left wall, his eyes closing as if that would help him pretend that he was not trapped in a small room that he obviously had not wanted to come into in the first place. The woman herself agreed with him silently on that count, for she would have taken the stairs had time provided her with that option. 

After sitting on the floor for a moment, cross-legged in her silence, she looked up at her sole companion. The silence was eating away at the back of her mind, and even though something about this man was faintly bothering her on a level she did not like to think on, he was her only chance at conversation in this space.

"You know," she said suddenly, gamely, "if we really are going to be stuck in here for awhile, like you said, we might as well talk to each other."

Opening his eyes, he gave her a strangely assessing stare before sighing. "Oh. I'm sorry. It's just that I've never been good at talking to women," he explained, adjusting those dark glasses with what was genuine nervousness. "Actually, I've never been good at talking to people in general…but sometimes women, they're worse than men." His laugh was sharp, as if he had not used it enough to blunt it with familiarity and joy. "I always wonder what there is to say…what there is to say that actually _matters_." He emphasised the last word by abruptly pushing the folder from his knees, paper falling out of the bland cover like leaves from a tree in autumn. "I hardly believe that 'Hey, baby, what's your sign?' counts as a deep and profound query as to the state of somebody's psyche."

His wording was unusual; she could tell from the way he spoke that he was being honest with her. The aura he exuded only emphasised the truth he had spoken himself; dealings with humans as alive as he might be were not his forte at all.

Somehow she couldn't help but laugh at his words, though she knew that they were not meant to be taken that way. The seriousness that underlay each of his words, it was alien to her and yet it touched her. Even as he gave her a slightly quizzical look – questioning mixed with the uneasy beginnings of the suspicion that she was laughing at him – she began to explain.

"…sorry for laughing," she apologised, giving him an easy grin that she had used in childhood and early adolescence so often, though its use had regrettably faded much beyond the age of fourteen. She had never entirely worked out why that was. "I've just met so many guys who _did_ believe that what you said counted as a prelude to a deep and meaningful conversation…" Shaking her head, she pushed one long-fingered hand through her hair, revelling only absently in the soft feel. She had just washed it this morning. "Not that I ever found anything particularly thrilling about telling anyone that I was born under -----." She paused, cocked her head slightly to one side. The smile, the one her youth had been so privy to, had thankfully not faded away. "But since you brought it up, what sign are _you_?" 

"I was born under the rose," he muttered, slightly monotonous voice filling out, becoming…_richer_, rendered surreal by colours that did not belong to any spectrum her mind was open to. 

The resonance of the words were beyond the scope of her perception, and yet…yet…

"What?" The whisper was lighter, more a mere breath than an attempt at speech, but it echoed with odd power in the tiny room that they shared.

"Never mind." The words were louder than hers, but just as immaterial. "I'm sorry. Conversation has never been my strong point, I'm afraid. Even when I make an effort to try and speak to someone I often still have trouble expressing myself. At any rate, I dislike elevators as a general rule, they make me…uncomfortable."

Slowly he pushed himself down the wall, back-sliding until he sat with his legs in front of him. One long fingered hand reached to pick up the folder he had laid on the floor, now placing it almost absently on his thighs. She was surprised to notice how long his legs were, as he stretched them out across the floor of the elevator. It was easy to have the suspicion that he been seated against the back of the elevator rather than the side of it that they would have spanned the entire distance. Quietly brooding over it in one corner of her labyrinthine mind didn't help her to understand why it bothered her, though. Long-legged men – particularly those much more so than her present companion – bothered her on a level that it was hard for her to get off the elevator at, so to speak. 

The silence was oppressive. 

"…are you feeling any better?" The question was useless, she knew that; the heavy silence that she had broken with the question was answer enough to it anyway. The man, despite having relaxed his stance enough to stretch the way he had, was obviously not growing more comfortable with his surroundings. Still, the question had come, and she was glad for it when he chose to reply. 

"No, but I think I can live with this for a little longer than I might have believed otherwise." The sigh that escaped him then had the distinct quality of an afterthought; his own long, tapered fingers lingered over the pages of notes scattered beside him. It appeared to her that he was almost reading with his fingertips, for his eyes, unnaturally coloured by his tinted glasses, did not once look down. Instead, his gaze seemed fixed on some point above and to the left of her head. 

"Have you always…disliked elevators?" She had had the desire to substitute "been afraid of" for "disliked," but she had caught herself in time to exercise the necessary tact. This peculiar man was probably not the best potential conversationalist in the world – he had admitted it to her himself – but he was all she had. There was no point in offending or alienating him now. 

The eyes fixed on some distant object beyond what she suspected was even the bounds of reality seemed to come back to earth, dragged in by her question as if it were some kind of anchored tractor beam. 

"No," he replied, and she was surprisingly grateful for the fact that the reply had the weight about it that indicated he had seriously considered the question before replying. "No, I haven't always felt this way."

"I don't think I have, either," she said honestly, earning herself a slightly curious look from the man. "I…well, I've always been mildly claustrophobic, or at least I have been since my parents died when I was seven." She expelled a slow breath of air from her tightening lungs at this, surprised at how the mention of her long-deceased parents seemed to affect her more than she had thought it would. "But elevators never really bothered me until…I went to a school with them, I guess." She shuddered slightly. "Not that I can really tell you why, it's just…they remind me of the Chairman's office, and I left that particular school because of a run-in with the Chairman of the Board."

Silence once more.

"I'm not claustrophobic." His words were very quiet when they eventually cut lightly into the quiet that surrounded them both like the invisible petals of an unseen rose. "It's just an uncomfortable feeling of…déjà vu," he said, and the slightly arched eyebrow he granted her spoke volumes about his opinion of what he had just told her. "Now, I don't presume to guess that you know anything about who I am, but—"

"But you're a man of science, and as such you don't believe in such things?" she asked, feeling the tugging of a gentle smile at the corners of her lips. It was the smile she gave to certain children of certain cases in the line of her work. The smile that said "I believe you, so why don't you believe yourself, too?" She had seen too many children abused enough to think that they had no opinions worthy of attention, or children too sunk into the truth pounded – occasionally literally – into them, the so-called truth that they were only to believe in what they were told was real, and never dream nor even think for themselves.

She had the feeling that this man, this alternately nervous, alternately frozen man, he had been similarly abused sometime in his life.

"How did you know that I am a man of science?"

"Let's just say that you don't look like a trashy paperback novel writer," she told him, standing up a moment to stretch her long, whip-corded muscles. Sitting in that one position for so long was already too much for a person as active as she; casting a look over at her companion as she stretched her hamstrings in a soft lunge, she spared him another grin. She wasn't sure if it was entirely worth it, as he didn't really seem to respond to such gestures, but she had always believed it never hurt to try. "Besides, it's in my job to sort of evaluate people by their appearance, if you know what I mean."

"Perhaps I do." She had the feeling he didn't; a man as separate from people as he obviously held himself couldn't know much about knowing people merely from the clothes they wore, the way they walked, the manner in which they twirled necklaces in nervous fingers or stroked the paint-work of a nearby car. "I can't say I have much talent for it myself, however."

"I do…to some extent," and her face darkened a little as she paused in her stretching. "I have to admit I sometimes look too hard for the good in people…and I see the good things in their nature that don't even exist." Sighing, she sat down, tilting her head towards the man. "Can I try and guess what you do? It'd be good practice for me."

The eyes that regarded her through the tinted glass of his lenses were dark; she couldn't help but wonder what the actual colour of those shielded orbs actually was. "As long as I don't have to guess what your occupation is in return. I'm not very good at this kind of thing."

"Don't worry about it," she said with another brief grin – too brief; she'd always liked to smile, and she did always seem to wonder why she had stopped doing it back…back whenever it had been, that morning she'd woken up and simply not found the world so beautiful nor generous any longer. "I'm a social worker, anyway. But you…well, you're obviously some kind of academic."

The smile he gave her in return was slight, very obviously out of practice. "Correct. However, I don't think that quite constitutes as telling me what my actual _occupation _is."

"You want details, huh?" A small laugh escaped her, and she wasn't sure why. Though the man was unsettling, something about her warmed to him in a manner she could not identify. The only clue her subconscious offered up was the nagging feeling that _they were the same kind of person_, though that she dismissed almost as soon as it became forefront in her thoughts. The idea was ridiculous; she'd never met anyone more unlike herself. For starters, she'd never liked school much, and this man seemed the type to stay there for years by choice alone. 

He shrugged. "God is in the details, isn't that the saying?"

"You don't strike me as the religious type, you know," she replied smartly, though not unkindly as she settled herself back into a light cross-legged position. "And anyway, a man of science wouldn't believe in God, would he?"

"Perhaps not." His voice, that odd voice with the almost-but-not-quite quality of an echo, seemed quieter. "But you still haven't told me what I do."

"Afraid I'll forget?"

"No. After all, I am your only chance at conversation in here, aren't I?"

She couldn't help but laugh a little at the ironic way he was arching one eyebrow at her. He'd picked up on her earlier thoughts beautifully, for a person who was prone to solitude. "Actually, even if you weren't my only chance of conversation, I'd probably still talk to you."

"Oh?"

"You're interesting," she said honestly, not quite caring what he might make of that statement. Still, he surprised her in return; she'd been expecting him to look at least a little unnerved, perhaps, but his expression was almost wan.

"I think you're interesting, too."

"Really? In what way?" Her surprise fuelled the immediate question, though she was quick to dismiss it herself. "Don't worry about it now, actually, I haven't answered your question…" She allowed her voice to trail off, and looked thoughtfully back to the man she shared this small space with. He did not say a word once she had fallen silent, something she found both odd and natural. After all, though most people she knew couldn't stand silence, this was the kind of man who seemed to let the silence speak for him. 

Just a few words, a few well chosen words, and let the silence woven around them speak the volumes that he could not.

"You're some kind of mathematician or physicist, right?"

"Yes." One word, his eyes still watching her in that almost arachnid manner. The spidery feeling didn't bother her on the level it bothered some people – she'd never been the type of girl to squeal at insects or other creepy-crawlies – but on another. He had eyes that seemed to be more than a pair – many eyes that were cooler than a human's, calculating and untouched by discernible emotion.

She glanced down at her hands, devoid of rings and bracelets. Jewellery had never interested her much; it got in her way at her martial arts classes and social sports games. As she lightly stretched her fingers, she began to voice more thoughts, as he was obviously not quite satisfied with her reply yet. "You…kind of sound like a teacher, actually…you sound…oh, what's the word? You have a teacher's tone, anyway."

"I think the word you're looking for is didactic," he offered, though he was shaking his head slightly. "And no, I am not a teacher."

"Didn't quite think so…but you've spent a lot of time at a university or something, right? You've lectured? Actually, I think you must be pretty smart. You've got the look of someone who's spent a lot of time telling other people what he knows while they don't have a clue what he's on about."

He actually laughed at this, though the sound was a little rusty, like…like…like an elevator cord that was jammed and wouldn't let the carriage move. "You would be right there, actually. I _do_ lecture upon occasion. I have also been offered various positions at universities about the country, but I've never wanted to settle at any of them."

Something about those words ate at her mind; she'd mouthed her thoughts bare seconds after she'd begun to think them. "Do you not feel like you belong anywhere, either?"

She'd managed to startle him that time. He looked directly at her, his eyes now coloured by something much less tangible than his tinted glasses. "…in a manner of speaking, yes." His eyes met hers, searching them briefly though he did not appear to find whatever it was he was looking for. "I'm a freelance research consultant," he said finally, his hands finally moving from his notes to sit lightly upon his thighs. "I like to move around, you see. It's a little like you said…when I stay in any one place for too long, I begin to feel…static. Like the world around me is moving too fast, while I don't change at all." His tone had changed now, certainly; instead of being the slightly bored, slightly monotonous tone he had used originally, it was tensed, pulled taut like a harpsichord string. "It's like being eternally young, but…but it's like being out of touch as the world grows older while you don't, you know what I mean?"

"I do," she said quietly, and she sighed, leaning her head backward against the elevator wall so that she was staring at the top of the carriage. "I do tend to stay in one place for months at a time, but I always move on. It's almost as if I…as if I've lost something, and I'm still looking for it wherever I go, you know? I don't know where I lost it, or what _it_ even is, but it's as if I keep moving, I'll find it someday…" Her voice trailed off, and she was startled to feel the slight heat of a faint blush moving lightly over her cheekbones. "Sorry for going on like that, you must think I'm nuts."

"Oh, it's all right," he said, and his voice was still strange in its sound, slightly huskier than it had been before. "I can't help but think that listening to people pouring out their troubles to me is just another ride in the elevator."

"Odd thing to say," she said, looking over at him with a slightly questioning look. He wasn't looking at her, preferring to page aimlessly through the folder at his side. "Especially since you don't like elevators much."

No reply was forthcoming from the man, leaving her to go back to absently picking at the scuffed carpet covering the floor. It seemed particularly thin where she sat, and listening to the sound of her breathing in the silence between them, she suddenly became glad this was a non-smoking building. She hated cigarette smoke.

"No, I don't smoke."

She looked up in surprise, though it was only to find that he was not looking at her anyway. The eyes that had unnerved her in that peculiar manner, they were firmly fixed in the direction of the papers though it seemed he gazed through them, rather than at them. 

"What?"

"I said 'No, I don't smoke.'" He still didn't seem to be paying her his full attention, his gaze still locked on some intangible illusion that existed only through the opaque looking-glass of his work. "I can't stand the smell of smoke, you see. It literally makes me nauseous; the only reason I'm a good cook is that I can end up spending the rest of the day in the bathroom if I burn something."

"…no, no, I mean…" Was that really her voice that sounded so faint? She wasn't used to sounding like that; she'd always preferred to speak in a voice that was a shade deeper than her natural voice, because it made her feel almost…stronger, somehow. "I never asked you if you smoked."

"Of course you did." The reply was almost clinical, not at all perturbed by her strangeness of voice. "Just before."

"…no, I…I just…was thinking that I was glad this was a non-smoking building, because I think I'd go mad if I had to sit in an elevator that smelled like cigarettes, and then you…"

He was looking up now; long pale hands pushed the notes aside as he looked at her more closely. "Are you feeling all right?" There was unpractised concern evident in the words. "Maybe we should try the phone again, or perhaps yell for help. After all, if you're feeling ill, we should really get out of here as soon--"

"No, no, it's okay, really," she assured him, trying to press back her confusion and in the same movement attempting the snap the small sliver of fear growing into her abdomen. "I must just be thinking aloud, and not realising it." 

"I suppose we all do that sometimes." Though he did not sound doubtful, she knew that he would never do such a thing. There was something intensely private about this man. "Still, is there anything I can do?"

She was truly touched by his words, mostly because it was obvious to her that he didn't often offer a hand to those in trouble. It wasn't…coldness, not exactly; she perceived it more to be a simple lack of empathy with other people's needs and suffering.

Clearly meeting his eyes, she gave him another smile, one that was truly genuine in its kindness. "Actually, there is something you could do for me."

"Yes?" He sounded a touch vulnerable when he said that; she almost wondered if she shouldn't ask him the question. After all, he struck her as a private person, something she had observed many times before this instant. Still, she didn't allow herself to linger over the fact. She simply asked him straight out.

"Ask me a question about myself." Noticing that his face had taken on a rather startled look, she grinned and continued on as if to make him feel more comfortable. "Anything at all. Just to keep the conversation going, stop me from wandering off like that."

For a moment she thought he was going to protest that it would be impolite. When she opened her mouth to insist that it wouldn't be, he interrupted her with a strange glint in his shielded eyes. A little voice somewhere deep inside continued to wonder what their colour truly was.

"Have you always wanted to be a social worker?"

The question struck a chord in her somehow; it was like a ball had been slam-dunked through a net only to discover that there was no ground beneath to capture it.

"…I…" So strange, how her thoughts had scattered. "…well, actually, no…I…no." 

It was ironic how she suddenly felt the need to clam up; he was now the one persisting to speak when silence would have been more preferable with her whirlpool of thought. "When did you decide to become one?"

It was a long time before she answered. A part of her had expected him to be made uncomfortable by the silence, but when she actually considered it she supposed she had had no right to be surprised. After all, it stood to reason that a person accustomed to solitude would also be patient. 

"When I got expelled." That was her eventual reply. She winced slightly as she said it; for some reason, she'd never been able to quite get over that feeling of disquiet and shame she always got when remembering that. Something about the school she'd left in such unusual circumstances always left her feeling hollow, like she'd failed some important test somewhere along the line…though when she considered the feeling rationally, it became silly, almost ridiculous. After all, she could barely even remember the name of the damned school.

He surprised her again. "Don't worry, I got fired from my first job," he told her almost gamely, smiling faintly as he did so. "I think we all trip up somewhere as we play the game of life – hardly anybody genuinely approaches a state of perfection, after all"

Startled, her deep azure eyes were wide as she met his. The colour still alluded her. "You got fired from your first job?"

"Don't look so surprised!" And still, he seemed so different now as he fought to hide a smile. "Didn't I just say that absolutely nobody was perfect?"

The pain of her nails digging into her skin forced her eyes downward; she hadn't even realised she was clenching her hands into fists until that moment. It was frustration, she guessed. Being perfect might well have been an impossibility, but that didn't ever mean that she had never wanted to be that way. "…I don't know. You just don't look like the type who'd ever get themselves fired, that's all."

"I might agree with you there," he said, and his voice took on an odd tone as the faint laughter left it. "And then again, I might not. You see, while I might play by the rules, I…march to a different drummer, so to speak."

She watched him now, broken skin forgotten. "You were fired because you didn't see eye to eye with your boss?"

"Loved for being unique, hated for being different." His words were quiet; they might have been a quote from somewhere but she'd never had enough to do with literature to be able to put her finger on it. "It's an exaggeration, perhaps, but while my talents were desirable my temperament was not. That's all there was to it, I suppose." 

"In what way?"

He sighed again, eyes darkening as he obviously began to wish that he had not brought the subject up. "When I was younger – about nineteen, as I remember it – I obtained a rather peculiar job at an unusual school. To this day I couldn't tell you all that much about the job or even what it was that we were doing there, but it doesn't matter. Though it may seem to you that I was too young for a job as a consultant, it actually wasn't my first." There was something ironic about the light dancing in his eyes behind the tinted glass then. "I am a genius, after all."

There was no need for a comment on her part as to his lack of modesty – for, simply put, it had nothing to do with it. There was no vanity in his tone, for he only stated what he perceived to be a simple fact.

__

And really, she thought to herself quietly,_ that's probably all it really is to him._

"I just remember…two people." His voice had gone very quiet then. "One was the representative of the Board of the school, the other was her younger brother. I became…friends with the both of them." His voice tightened as he said this, and she heard easily his heartstrings contracting with sorrow as he spoke. "They were my first friends, to be honest with you. Up until then I had been known as a remarkable youth with the mind of someone much older, much wiser. Though I was never discriminated for my age when it came to matters of employment, I found it difficult to find work. It was because of what others said of me myself." 

"…what was that?"

"'Does not play well with others.'" He laughed wryly as he said it. "Direct quote from one of my professors, that. Still, I was hired with the oddest words…the man who hired me, whom I never recall actually meeting, said in my letter of acceptance that he expected me to change with time. He said…he said that: 'Youth is vibrant…malleable. You're looking for something outside the scope of your cold sciences. I hope that you will find it here and advance our work in the process.'"

"That is strange."

"Not as strange as the fact that I can't quite remember why I was fired," the man replied, beginning to straighten his files. She figured that it was only an excuse for him to drop his eyes from hers, an excuse not to look right at her. "It's complicated for many reasons, after all. I became perhaps too friendly with the representative of the board, for I fell in love with her though as I remember it she was involved with another man…and her brother…"

His voice trailed off here, his long fingers stilling over the papers. After a moment she opened her mouth to ask him where he was going, only to be interrupted when he expelled a shaky sigh that was dangerously close to a sob.

"Her younger brother was a remarkable creature. A genius of some calibre, though not in my isolated ball park. I used to have long conversations with him about concepts a child of his age should have known nothing about…we used to play chess together, discuss my work, and he would often try to explain to me the intricacies of the poetry he loved so much but that I lacked the empathy to understand."

He paused again, this time for so long that she began to regret ever letting the conversation take this direction. However, he was the one who kept it going in the end. He took off his tinted glasses and quietly wiped at his eyes, steadying his voice before he began again.

"Of course there was an associated tragedy – I am familiar enough with literature to understand that the most remarkable characters of any story always pay the price for their uniqueness. Her brother was terminally ill, and he died while we were working." His hands were trembling again; she could tell this from the paper he held in his tenuous grip. "And I was fired slightly after. By that point, I did not care; his sister did not feel for me what I felt for her, and he himself was all that had made the world bearable by that point."

His loss seemed to beg for the silence that fell between them, and so she let it have the quietness. The silence stretched between them for an indeterminable time, broken only when she lightly swore.

"What is it?"

"I feel like I forgot to do something." Sighing softly, she closed her eyes and turned her face to the ceiling. "You ever get that feeling?"

"No." His answer was simple, his voice level now. It was almost as if he had forgotten the temporary misery he had fallen into mere minutes before. "But then, I write down my tasks. Perhaps you forgot to water your roses?"

He eyes snapped open as she looked to him with startled admiration. "…how did you know that I raised roses?"

The shrug he gave her in reply was small, just a slight movement of his thin shoulders. "You just seemed the type, somehow." The words were very nearly dismissive, his glassed eyes seemingly fixed on the papers he had taken up once again.

Unsettled, she looked down to her hands, seeing them tighten around each other as if they belonged to another person. There was no associated pain as the nails dug deeply into the palms of her hands. "…do you like roses…?"

"I prefer dried flowers," he replied quietly, absently sorting through his papers. He seemed to be making a random assortment of the pages before spending the next few minutes putting them back the way they should be. 

She'd never liked dried flowers much herself; as a matter of fact, she hated cut flowers in general, whether they were dried or living on in a glass of water that was never going to be enough to keep them alive for very long. "Why do you like them, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I don't know. It's as if when they're dried, you can pretend that they're living forever even when they're really just dead in a manner prettier than most."

What was that saying? That when you got goosebumps it meant someone had just walked over the site of your future grave? She was beginning to think there must be someone break-dancing on her plot, then. "That sounds…more unsettling than pleasant, you know."

"I sometimes wonder why I only feel relaxed when I feel unsettled," the man sighed, and he then furrowed his brows as the elevator jolted itself down perhaps an inch. "I think we may be getting somewhere."

The woman looked up, biting her lip absently as she noted the flickering of the fluorescent light. "Are you sure that's not just the cables giving on us?"

"I should hope not," the man replied, fluidly pushing himself to his feet. The gesture startled her; she had no idea why but some part of her had been convinced that the man would move more like…a robot. An unoiled tin-man or something. "Yes, we're going down too slowly for it to be the cable stretching to breaking point."

"It's lucky for me that I'm in here with a physicist, I guess."

"I'm actually more a mathematician, to be honest with you," he replied, giving her an odd look. "I prefer the intangible sciences over the tangible." 

"There's that much of a difference…?"

The only reply he gave her was a slightly wry smile, one that did not sit entirely well on such serious features. Though she did wish to ask more of him, it was simply too late, for the elevator had reached the ground floor that they had left some fifteen minutes earlier. 

"It looks like they've delivered us back to the ground floor."

"Well, better that than the basement," she muttered, and when this earned her a slightly questioning look from the pale-haired man, she just shrugged. "I was in a hospital for a while when I was…younger." Noticing that he was holding the OPEN DOOR button down as he stood paused in between the two automatic doors, looking to her and ignoring the two workmen just beyond the elevator, she continued. "I was really young, and didn't understand why I was there." She paused again, swallowed with difficulty. "Or where my parents were…so one night, I went looking for them. The nurses didn't even see me slip out…I shouldn't have found them, you know. But I did. Downstairs…in the basement."

The man closed his eyes for a second, though the woman did not miss in the slightest the pain that abruptly flickered through them. "In the morgue."

"I think I'm going to take the stairs up now," she said quietly, moving forward so that she could leave the elevator. The mathematician, however, blocked her way. This was not to last; he moved forward, dropping his long fingers from the button, stepping past the curious workmen without a glance in their direction.

His last words to her – as he moved to the front door, apparently too unsettled to keep his appointment, she to the stairs to arrive late to her own – were unmistakable.

"Good bye, Tenjou-san."

She stopped mid-stride; when she spun back around on one heel to look to her elevator companion he found that he appeared as startled as she herself felt.

"…how did you…"

Eyes of indeterminable colour blinked rapidly behind his dark glasses, his pale hands tightening their grip on his papers. "…living with undetermined secrets is a peculiar thing, devoid of any eternity at all." He seemed to understand those words no more than she did. "…maybe we'll run into one other again."

He had turned and disappeared into the crowd in the foyer before she could so much as speak another word to him. That did not stop him from mouthing his name, however, even though she was not entirely conscious that she was doing it.

"Nemuro-kyouju…"

Somehow, deep inside herself and her broken memories, she knew she was never going to see him again.

Somehow, in a roundabout way, that just made her feel better.


End file.
